J. O. FRASER was standing in the doorway of a shop in the busy quarter of a Chinese city not far from the frontier; of Burma. The tall figure looked well set-up in the gown of the scholar and the friendly eyes scanned the passersby with interest. Situated on a main trade route, Tengyueh was a place of call for caravans from far and near. Not a few nationalities mingled in the streets and inns of its south suburb, and tribespeople in their distinctive dress added color to its markets. As ships from distant ports give mystery and meaning to home harbors, so these shy but stalwart children of the mountains, whether Shan; Kachin, Lisu or Tibetan, brought suggestions of the Great Beyond, across the nearby ranges.
It was to them especially the young missionary’s thoughts tended as he entered upon his life work. Round him in the city, people were within hearing of the message, but up in those far-reaching mountains thousands upon thousands were waiting still for the words of life that were so long in coming.
But see, a group of strangers sauntering down the busy street―could they not be brought in to hear the Good Tidings? Fraser was soon beside them, but only when they responded to his invitation did he realize that they were not Chinese coolies, as he had supposed, but Lisu tribesmen from the mountains. This was quite a thrill, for he was specially anxious for such contacts. But a greater surprise was in store. For hardly were the four men inside the preaching hall than with one consent they went down on their knees, knocking their foreheads on the ground before him, in token of the greatest respect if not worship.
Bewildered for the moment, Fraser managed to raise them and tried to turn their thoughts to the One Who alone is worthy of worship. But they understood little Chinese and lie could speak no Lisu. He gathered that they had come from a place six days’ journey to the north, where tribes folk were many. No, they could not read. But they took the tracts in simple Chinese that Fraser offered, hiding them carefully in their girdles as of great value. What they were really thinking it would be hard to say. Why was this Foreign Teacher kind to them? What was it he so much wanted them to understand? Attracted, yet in doubt, they made for the street before long, but not without urging their new friend to Come out and visit them in the mountains.
Encouraged that they should have any wish to see him again, Fraser fell back upon his one Lisu sentence, ‘Cho ma cho’. ‘Is that so?’
‘Cho ma,’ they responded emphatically. ‘It is, it is!’
At the time of this encounter, Fraser had been rather more than a year in China. Six months at the men’s training center of the Mission had given him a good start with the language, and his designation to the far-western province of Yunnan had come as an answer to many prayers. For even before reaching China he had been drawn to work among the tribespeople of that region, so desperately in need of the Gospel. In the whole province, up to that time, there were only five mission stations, a week or two’s journey apart, and Tengyueh, the most westerly, had been occupied by Mr. W. Embery only twelve months previously.
Recently married, after seven years in China, Embery had brought his bride to anything but attractive surroundings. Part of a Chinese house was all he had been able to secure, a separate building on a Chinese courtyard, but damp and rat infested. Happily, Mrs. Embery, a trained nurse, was as true a missionary as her husband, and five years in China had given her a good hold of the language. The women of the city came in throngs to see her, the only ‘foreign lady’ being a great curiosity, and her influence over them was, in those early days, the most encouraging aspect of the work.
Not a corner being available in the mission house, a room had been taken for Fraser in the same part of the south suburb. The place being a better sort of inn, he was able to have a measure of comfort and quiet for study. The room, some twelve feet by fourteen, was up a little stairway, private to himself, and over an empty space he was able to use as a storeroom. A few articles of furniture were supplied by a local carpenter and, well content with his accommodation, Fraser set to work with his Chinese teacher, going over to the Emberys for meals.
From hours of study, it was a relief to plunge into the tides of life about him, especially on market days, when many tribespeople mingled with the cheerful crowds. The quarter of a mile to the Emberys’ quarters afforded opportunity for friendly contacts, and had brought Fraser into touch with his first Lisu acquaintance. This young mountaineer had even ventured to accompany him to the mission house, and had been so interested that he promised to return next time he came to the city. But many market days went by, bringing only disappointment, and not until Fraser ran into him unexpectedly on the busy street did he learn the reason for his non-appearance. The young man had been really in earnest, but on leaving the mission house had been held up by a Chinese of some importance who demanded to see the book he carried. This had to be handed over, for the Chinese are the ruling race, and the Lisu was angrily rebuked for having anything to do with foreigners and told that he must on no account read so bad a book! This had effectually scared him away, giving Fraser his first experience of the opposition to be expected from overlords, whether tribal or Chinese.
Meanwhile, from the east of the province, tidings were coming of a work of grace among the despised tribespeople that no opposition could restrain. Begun through the conversion of a poor Miao leper, thousands of his own and other tribes were turning to Christ from the grossest immorality and demon worship. Mr. A. G. Nicholls, an Australian member of the Mission, had followed up the work with so much devotion and success that it was spreading over a wide territory, and the Lisu part of it had to be handed over to a welcome colleague from England, Mr. G. E, Metcalf. Fraser had been appointed to Yunnan in order to prepare himself to join them, when his knowledge of Chinese should be sufficiently far advanced to permit of his taking up another language. Meanwhile, their correspondence could not but suggest the thought: if God is pleased to work in saving power among the tribes folk in the east of the province, why not among those of the west also? But no one was seeking his Lisu in the Tengyueh district; no one ever had sought them. Well he knew that to start out as a solitary pioneer was a very different thing from joining others in a successful campaign. But the Spirit of God was working, as he recalled long after, in conversation with the writer:
I was very much led out in prayer for these people, right from the beginning. Something seemed to draw me to them; and the desire in my heart grew until it became a burden that God would give us hundreds of converts among the Lisu of our western district.
Little was said about these thoughts and prayers. Fraser’s was a nature that took things deeply, and while this ‘fresh spiritual adventure’, as he felt it, had a strong appeal, it was ‘almost too sacred to speak of, except between the Lord and myself’.
So the daily routine of study was faithfully kept up. It was monotonous of course―the noisy inn, the busy streets, a glimpse of home life at the mission house, Chinese clothes and Chinese food in purely Chinese surroundings, and back to his books again. But Fraser was intent on the language. It fascinated while it almost appalled him. Two peaks of one great mountain, it seemed, as he wrote from the inn.
This mountain is called, The Chinese Language. It is very steep at first, but gradually seems easier as you go up. Then, just when you feel you are getting on, another peak comes into view, rising up higher than the first, but all part of the same mountain. This also has to be climbed. It is called Chinese Thought and Modes of Expression. You had been told about it before you began to scramble up the first mountain, but you did not see it then. And the first glimpse shows how far it is above you.
And all the while the young missionary was eager for communication with those about him. He went with Mr. Embery to the street chapel and nearby villages, but suffered from the experience common to newcomers, that of being practically dumb and deaf as well, to all but their immediate circle. Members of the missionary’s household became adept at interpreting his halting phrases and he was encouraged to find, before long, that he had made out the drift of their remarks. But not so those who have little contact with foreigners. Shut in thus to himself, the spiritual life is apt to flag. Unless a close walk with God is maintained, discouragement replaces early zeal and consecration, and the decline begins that means loss of joy and power.
Realizing the danger, Fraser set himself to watch and pray. Through his letters we find him rising early in the inn, for quiet over his Bible. He longs to know it better, and is reading every book in regular course, not once but seven times before passing on to the next. Prayer is more and more vitally necessary. When the inn wakes up there are endless distractions, but out of doors he finds quiet places. These become his prayer haunts, whether the hidden gully, the half-deserted temple or the open hillside. Gradually he has prayer resorts for all weathers, some of them often frequented. And the grand old hymns of the Church become increasingly valued, hymns that have expressed the soul’s aspirations and longings through the ages. Breadth of outlook was necessary to him―room for God, whether in nature or in spiritual realities. And most of all he is depending upon the personal presence of the One Who said, ‘Lo, I am with you alway.’
‘What is Christian experience,’ wrote an eminent theologian who humbly walked with God, ‘what is Christian experience but the secret history of the affection of the soul for an ever-present Saviour?’
Secret, steadfast, ever-growing ‘affection of the soul’, let that have the first place, in practical reality, and there will be no drifting or decline.
One of the things Fraser most dreaded, in these early days, was loss of time and strength on side issues. He saw that ‘the good’ may indeed be the enemy of ‘the best’. This applied in his case to correspondence that was not really necessary, to much photography, social intercourse with other foreigners, and even to language study.
I am trying my best [he wrote] to get hold of a good colloquial knowledge of Chinese, but it will take a long time―I am only at the beginning yet. This is more important, I feel, than to become a learned Chinese scholar, for after all the chief thing is to talk in a way easy to be understood. Mr. McCarthy told us of a missionary, years ago, who was extraordinarily accomplished as a Chinese scholar, but whose own servant could not understand him in everyday matters! There certainly is something fascinating about the study of literary Chinese―which must go hand in hand with work on the colloquial―but I imagine it would be easy to be too much taken up with it.
Pencil and notebook at hand, he was always taking down words and phrases used in conversation about him, whether he understood them or not. ‘Jot it down,’ was his motto, ‘and then ferret out the meaning, with dictionary and teacher, and learn it off by heart.’
I have taken down several hundred phrases in this way. The temptation is to be content to use words which nearly express your meaning, but not quite... For instance you learn the Chinese for ‘this is badly done’, and might make it do duty for clothes not washed clean, a room not properly tidied up, a picture not hung straight, a piece of meat half-cooked, a matter unsatisfactorily settled, etc., etc. But the Chinese make distinctions in these things, as we do in English.
A poverty-stricken vocabulary was a confession of neglect of duty to this keen painstaking student, with the result that he became one of the best Chinese speakers as well as scholars in the Mission.
Young as he was, only twenty-two at this time, he had learned the importance of faithfulness in seemingly trivial duties and of making the most of present opportunities. An earnest letter on this subject, written amid the discomforts of a very poor wayside inn, on one of his first journeys, reveals some of the elements of his own self-discipline.
It has come home to me very forcibly of late that it matters little what the work is in which we are engaged; so long as God has put it into our hands, the faithful doing of it is of no greater importance in one case than in another.... The temptation I have often had to contend with is persistent under many forms: ‘If only I were in such and such a position,’ for example, ‘shouldn’t I be able to do a great work! Yes, I am only studying engineering at present, but when I am in training for missionary work things will be different and more helpful.’ Or ‘I am just in preparation at present, taking Bible courses and so on, but when I get out to China my work will begin.’ ‘Yes, I have left home now, but I am only on the voyage, you know; when I am really in China, I shall have a splendid chance of service.’ Or, ‘Well, here in the Training Home, all my time must be given to language study―how can I do missionary work? But when I am settled down in my station and able to speak freely, opportunities will be unlimited!’ etc., etc.
It is all IF and WHEN. I believe the devil is fond of those conjunctions... I have today, to a limited extent, the opportunities to which he has been putting me off (not that I have always yielded to these temptations), but far from helping me to be faithful in the use of them, he now turns quite a different face. The plain truth is that the Scriptures never teach us to wait for opportunities of service, but to serve in just the things that lie next to our hands... The Lord bids us work, watch and pray; but Satan suggests, wait until a good opportunity for working, watching and praying presents itself―and needless to say, this opportunity is always in the future.... Since the things that lie in our immediate path have been ordered of God, who shall say that one kind of work is more important and sacred than another? I believe that it is no more necessary to be faithful (one says it reverently) in preaching the Gospel than in washing up dishes in the scullery. I am no more doing the Lord’s work in giving the Word of Life to the Chinese than you are, for example, in wrapping up a parcel to send to the tailor. It is not for us, in any case, to choose our work. And if God has chosen it for us, hadn’t we better go straight ahead and do it, without waiting for anything greater, better or ‘nobler’?
More than this, he found the need of checking in himself the tendency to chafe against trials which lie in the path of duty.
We often say, I am looking forward to this, that or the other. Have we any right to be so dissatisfied with our present condition, which God has ordained for us, that we hanker after something in the future? I can hardly see that we have. There is one great exception―we are to look forward with earnest expectation to the coining of the Lord. But we have to be patient even in this. And to look for our Saviour’s appearing is a very different thing from hankering after enjoyments of which we hope to partake some time ahead... Why should I, in the hot, close, rainy season at Tengyueh, long for the dry months when things are more pleasant all round? Didn’t God intend me to put up with the discomforts of heat and mildew? Why should I look forward to the time when I shall be able to speak Chinese more freely? Didn’t God intend me to serve an apprenticeship in learning the language? Why should I look forward to a little more time for myself, for reading, etc.? Though it is the most natural thing in the world to have such thoughts, I feel that they are not at all scriptural. There is more of the flesh about them than the spirit. And they seem to be inconsistent with the peace of God which, it is promised, shall guard our hearts and our thoughts through Christ Jesus... The apostle Paul said that he had ‘learned’, in whatsoever state he was, therein to be content implying that he had reached that attitude through discipline. And I suppose it must be so with all of us; the natural tendency is to be always straining after something in the future.
The resolution with which Fraser lived in the present was rewarded when the great day came of his first attempt at preaching in the street chapel. After little more than nine months in China, this was quite an ordeal. He prepared carefully, but when he faced his audience the written pages were largely discarded. Thoughts and feelings somehow found words that went home to his hearers. He was well understood, Mr. Embery assured him, and from that time took part regularly in the meetings. That this work was taken seriously is apparent from the study he gave to it.
In preparing my address, I first went through the Acts of the Apostles and some other passages, comparing them with a view to finding out the actual Gospel we are bidden to preach... The result was very instructive to me. I had never imagined the Gospel was so simple. Why, Peter and Paul both preached the Gospel in words which would not take one minute to say!
And I found out that there are just four things which seem to be essential in preaching the Gospel.
1. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ—no theological explanation needed.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ—most important of all. The Gospel was never preached without this being brought in.
Exhortation to hearers to repent of their sins.
Promise to all who believe on Jesus Christ that they will receive remission of sins.
Beyond these four points others are mentioned occasionally, but they are not many.... In teaching Christians, it is quite another matter. To them we are to declare the whole counsel of God as far as they can receive it. But the Gospel as preached to the unsaved is as simple as it could be. I should not care to take the responsibility of preaching ‘another Gospel’.
Armed with all these important truths, Fraser was not slow in attempting his first evangelistic journeys. We find him twice on the road, alone with a friendly coolie, before he had been fifteen months in China; and these journeys led, as it proved, to rich results, though there was little promise of it at the time. For they were stiff pioneering, without the aid of fellow-workers, foreign or Chinese, because (with the exception of Mr. and Mrs. Embery) there were none.
Crossing the Tengyueh plain by the main road to the east, Fraser’s first journey soon brought him to range after range of mountains on his way to Yungchang (now called Paoshan), the city of his destination. On this journey he was crossing two of the great rivers which, rising in Tibet, wind their long course to the sea through western Yunnan and Burma. The lesser of these, the Shweili, was beautiful in its deep, wooded valley, entered the first day out from Tengyueh. Beyond this, majestic indeed, was the Salween. Divide, surmounted after a long toilsome ascent in steadily falling rain. The inns at night were very rough, but the poor food and poorer accommodation were made up for by the beauty of the mountains rising on every side. From the pass, eight thousand feet above sea level, it was a long descent to the Salween itself; whose mighty gorges were to cradle some of the richest results of Fraser’s lifework. Little could he anticipate as he crossed its turbid waters, the triumphs of the Gospel he was to witness among the wild, neglected tribes, far up its winding course. Staying at night among the Black Lisu of the Divide, he could not but notice that they seemed even poorer and dirtier than his Tengyueh tribespeople. But they were kindly and brought him eggs with their coarse food, as they sat by their smoky fires.
The fourth day of the journey dawned bright and clear, with glorious views of ‘mountains, mountains, mountains’ on the east of the Divide, as they descended to the Paoshan plain. To Fraser’s surprise, the city was far larger than Tengyueh, and scores of villages seen on the far-reaching plain told of a comparatively dense population. Entering by the south gate, they had to walk quite a long way up the broad main street before coming to the place of inns. There they found a ‘comfortable inn’, as Fraser called it, large enough to accommodate some sixty people.
It was really more like a barn than a guest room. However, I got a straw brush, swept the worst of the dust off everything and settled down for a few days.
The room had the advantage of being upstairs, so that the visitor could receive any callers with more hope of quiet for conversation. And not a few came to see him. Among them was a Mr. Wang, a silversmith, who invited Fraser to dinner in his shop on the main street and gave him the use of his premises for preaching and bookselling, But first a quiet Sunday was spent outside the city wall, to avoid curious crowds while preaching and distributing tracts. As a new experience in evangelism, Fraser found it most encouraging.
Coming to a couple of men minding cattle, I sat down with them, near a small stream. To my question, ‘Have you heard the Jesus Doctrine?’ they answered, ‘No, tell us about it.’ So I told them the Gospel story as clearly as I could. They listened well and asked questions. A few passersby stopped and sat down, so I had to begin over again. More and then more joined us, until I had told the same thing four or five times over and about a dozen people were listening. When the sun came out we all adjourned under a tree ... and I went on. Whether they understood all I was telling them I cannot say, but they listened well and seemed as interested and friendly as could be. In getting up once I ripped my gown, and one of them ran home for a needle and cotton and mended it for me. I was preaching to them for about an hour and a half, and then two of them came on with me to lead me to other places where I could find people to talk with...
Entering the city again in the afternoon, a man in a teashop saw me distributing tracts and called me to come in. He gave me a cup of tea and asked to see my tracts. A crowd soon gathered and I preached to them as I had been doing all morning. The man who had called me in seemed fairly well educated. He read the tracts and listened to all I was saying, evidently understanding a good deal.
The next two days were as busy as could be, for Mr. Wang fixed up a stall in his open shop front behind which Fraser sat on a high stool, hour after hour, surrounded by changing crowd. Scripture portions, calendars, pictures mcl tracts, including translations of Spurgeon’s sermons, re eagerly purchased, and the willingness of the people hear all he could tell them moved him deeply. So did the view of the city as he had seen it on Sunday, when he climbed a little hill to rest under a pagoda.
Paoshan was to be in a special sense his own among Chinese cities, for he had the privilege, through repeated visits, of founding the living Church which is witnessing there today and which treasures, as well it may, his last resting place on those very hills―for it is there he waits the resurrection morning. With straitened heart Fraser had looked out upon it all for the first time.
It was a lovely day [he wrote] and I had a clear view of the plain in both directions, as well as of the city. Of course, no missionary has ever lived there; and the whole plain, with a population of perhaps 100,000 is without the light of the Gospel... I believe God would be glorified by even one witness to His Name amid the perishing thousands of Paoshan.
It does seem a terrible thing [he continued from Tengyueh] that so few are offering for the mission field.... I can’t help feeling that there is something wrong somewhere. Surely God must be wanting His people to go forward. Does not the Master’s last command still hold good? As one thinks of even our corner of the world here in Yunnan, there seems a strange discrepancy between its huge districts, large towns, unreached tribespeople, waiting for the workers who do not come, and the big missionary meetings at home, the collecting and subscribing, the missionary literature published, etc., etc. And the need is the same, if not greater, in other parts of the world. Hundreds of millions of people who have never yet had the Gospel definitely brought before them―and a mere handful of missionaries sent out from the home countries to evangelize them!
How glad he was to be where he was, with life before him, lonely and discouraging though the work must have been at times. On the second of those journeys, long days were spent in preaching and bookselling in another district, south of Paoshan and equally unreached. There, a little boy of six, unknown to Fraser, got hold of a copy of Mark’s Gospel in its bright, attractive cover. Carried over the mountains to his home at Hsiangta, it was to fall as seed into good ground―but not until years later was the young missionary to find and rejoice in the, harvest.